EMP Sound Off! Round 3

The first two Sound Off! shows were epic, featuring great music and great showmanship and an embarrassment of riches. Laser Fox came out ahead in round 1 and Thee Samedi took round 2. Now for round 3!

I ended up volunteering to help the Vera Project load in at the Triple Door for the gala in the afternoon, then running out and picking up Greg and heading back downtown to see the show. We parked in my office's underground secured lot and walked over to the EMP and headed up the SF stairs to the venue. Coming off the stairs we stopped by the Vera table and said hello. I didn't end up tabling for the Vera Project so I didn't get a seat between acts after all. Dang.

First up was Calico the Band who drove 10 hours from Boise to play for us and brought plenty of supporters.

The instruments were acoustic, upright bass and acoustic guitars and fiddles and banjos and mandolins. At least I think they used a mandolin, they switched around freely. They also had a drum set that was played standing up on occasion and another drum up front. They had a more percussion driven approach than I'd anticipated and got the audience cranked up quickly. The energy level was high and the band was very good, with a rich sound and good vocals and a presentation that just pulled you right in to the stomping beats and fun music. The lady on the keyboards was the "front-woman" handling the majority of the vocals and her charisma put them over. They put in a solid set that warmed up the crowd and had us dancing and yelling, but they had the difficult challenge of winning from the opening slot. The next band had a better chance simply because Calico the Band warmed up the audience. Unfortunate, but somebody had to go first.

Next up was K Sneak. I saw her at a Knowmads show a few years back, if I remember correctly. Oh yeah, I remember, the Japan benefit show in 2011 when she was in 9th grade. She's grown and matured and had a good time working the crowd and rapping, good to see her getting some love and attention and rewards for sticking to it and working at it. A hip hop act with a prerecorded track or sequence has a challenge keeping the EMP crowd engaged; bands like Tommy Cassidy add a full band to the rapping so the sequencing is minimal and the performance has more going on. K Sneak was fearless and carried her set and filled the stage like she'd been doing it for years (at least 3 so far!).

Good flow and an assortment of fast and interesting rhythms along with some nice cover choices got the crowd into it and enjoying it. Two good sets with 2 more bands to go.

Next up was Fauna Shade. My friend Eduard Contreras plays drums in the band and I enjoy their sound, which Troy Nelson described as "reverb drenched" or something like that - and he wasn't wrong.

I enjoy their sound and already have a couple of favorite songs that I enjoy hearing live, so they had me and a corner of the crowd by the stage dancing away and having a sweaty good time. The crowd intensity definitely spiked up with the distorted loud guitar driven sound and the bass lines occasionally replaced by psychedelic sounding string scrapes with Eduardo pounding away keeping time and tempo. Greg (the photographer) mentioned that he was particularly impressed by Eduardo's drumming, and he doesn't give out all that many compliments. Great sound, great rhythm, tight band in a fun groove. Without a pure lead vocalist the guitarist vocalist was somewhat rooted to the vocal mic which made it harder to put on a show while also playing and singing, so the music got much of the focus.

Fauna Shade finished off a great set and our corner of the crowd wiped the sweat off of our brows and re-hydrated aggressively. Things were looking good for Fauna Shade, I was leaning towards them as the best act of the night but it was tough, all the acts were good.

Then Otieno Terry came out. He opened with an a cappella vocal that showcased his beautiful rich voice and got the front row and the center of the crowd eating out of the palm of his hand.

Then the band came out and finished the takeover, and we went on an awesome musical journey. Soul music and thumb popping bass lines, crooned sections with rich backing parts and the occasional doo-wop overtones and brilliant piano work all just served to amplify the charisma and effect of Otieno's performance.

The band was dressed in nice suits with dark slacks and grey sport jackets and ties and looked sharp, and also a bit like a throwback to the rat pack days. The backing vocalist in particular was talented and a great addition to the sound and attitude of the band, and his whistling was phenomenal.

Yet even that and consistently hot musicianship didn't come close to overshadowing Otieno, who gave each of his band mates a chance to shine - then emphatically took back the spot light to bring the show home. Intense soulful lyrics and a joyful performance made sure that the musical journey took us exactly where we all wanted to be even if we hadn't known it. This was one of those commanding performances that sucked us in and took us along with Otieno through the emotional wringer that he sang so powerfully to us about. The final number got the crowd screaming and moving and roaring, and once again the night ended with a band strutting off the stage on top of the world, conquerors of several hundred adoring sweating fans, and the inevitable confirmation of the judges that Otieno Terry was going to the finals was almost anti-climatic. They were eff-ing off the charts in a style I haven't seen anybody do, much less do well, in ages, and the judging has been pretty good (if maybe a little biased towards the later acts, just like the crowds). Fauna Shade got the wild card slot, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed until Sunday afternoon.


Update: Fauna Shade did indeed get into the finals as the wild card band. Hot damn! Now we get to see Laser Fox, Thee Samedi, Otieno Terry and Fauna Shade at next weeks EMP Sound Off! finals. This is going to be a great show, and I have no idea who's going to win. They're all talented and amazingly fun so the audience is going to have a great time no matter what!

EMP Sound Off! Round 1

For no good reason I haven't made it to the EMP Sound Off! events in a few years. This year I got tickets and rounded up my friend Charles to take pictures, and I'm glad I did: the first night of the Sound Off! was impressive. Troy Nelson from Young Evils (he also has a Saturday DJ slot on KEXP) was our MC.

First up was Tommy Cassidy. Just like Charles the photographer, Cassidy is from the Tri-Cities and went to Hanford High School. That plays a part in his message and we'll get to that, but first some details about the man and the band. Cassidy raps in front of a live band with horns. The band is fun and loud and has a women with a strong voice singing leads, alternating with Cassidy's raps and occasionally backing and filling during them. This band cooks along, and when the horn section comes in for some backing it's cool. When they run through some leads on the trumpet it's even better, and they even had some cool old school muted trumpet stuff giving a completely different sound and feel to one number.
Cassidy varied his approach in different songs, using a slower back-off-the-beat approach which somehow gave almost a visual quality to his raps, and also using a rapid fire intricate aggressive intense flow in another number that was visceral and powerfully emotional. Cassidy's range and lyrics and patter connected with us - his comments about being from the nuclear Tri-Cities and feeling like a stranger in his hometown resonated with everybody who's been a teenager.
Cassidy drew the first slot which is pretty much impossible to win from. He took a cold audience and warmed it up, did great work and impressed us, but then 3 more acts got to go on and distract us from the first performance, and they got to start with a warmed up audience. Cassidy showed he's more than capable of opening a show and I expect him to move up the bill quickly if he can make it to Seattle very often.
Quite talented and tight, Cassidy and the band got the crowd warmed up and into it.

Next Sophia Duccini took the stage with a violinist/fiddler and a backing vocalist. Duccini plays guitar and piano and sings, and the group gets an interesting range of sweet to haunting sounds and songs out of the lineup. The vocals stand out, with Duccini's strong leads carrying a good portion of the songs and the gorgeous harmonies reinforcing and ornamenting the songs and emotions. Duccini and her band cover a range of styles from piano based pop in the older sense to guitar and fiddle instrumentation with a folky Americana feel. Interesting music, I tend to think of it as small scale and a little quiet but Duccini instead made it introspective and recursive and filled with a different meaning each time they hit a repetition. It engages you and pulls you in without having to pound on you, it's almost a more hypnotic approach in some cases and more conversational in others. Getting the audience to connect to the music and get enthusiastic without that bottom end - no bass & no drums - is challenging but Duccini pulls it off, her music drives when she wants it to and she easily carries the rhythm on the guitar and piano, switching back and forth between songs. Already I'm torn between the first 2 performances, both groups are ridiculously talented and skilled. At this point I'm thinking the decision is between these two acts.

Next Laser Fox takes the stage. I've got to admit, the name is brilliant. It works really well in a chant - wait, I think that's a spoiler. Laser Fox kicked it off with a singer, drummer and two dudes at keyboards, one using an analog (or emulated analog) setup, and one of the two (couldn't tell which) filling in the low end so you had a good base line. It might have been sequenced or prerecorded bass, it's difficult to tell.

The lineup varied a bit from song to song, here one of the keyboard players is playing the bass guitar and the vocalist has taken over at the keyboard. The singer is the focus in this band. On a few songs he played a hollow bodied electric guitar and sang.
Laser Fox looked good, sounded good, and they sounded like they felt good. The crowd started getting into it and dancing and moshing, and the vocalist started strutting around and gesturing as he sang. The dude had charisma to spare and was totally pulling it off with the mosh pit getting bigger and more intense and just eating it up: we loved him. Laser Fox knows how to put on a show, and the pacing and slot (good hot hip-hop to warm up, internal and relationship songs (some were both) to whet our appetite, now a big loud testosterone filled performance - in a nice NW way, we are after all a polite Scandinavian influenced culture topped things off nicely. We were already having fun and then that danceable electronic music hit and we started moving, and the vocalist was moving with us and dancing and dropping and totally thriving on the attention. They got that feedback loop going where the audience intensity feeds off of the band's performance and then the band feeds off of the increasing audience intensity. Hot stuff, we were bouncing around and sweating and moshing.

I was sweaty and sore, and normally I'd expect a let down after 3 acts this good. On the other hand, a buddy had spoken highly of Dames. Dames plays a largely guitar driven sound with keyboards and (judging by the Macs) either sequenced or recorded bits too.

Dames brought their audience with them and turned in a rocking set, keeping the energy level high and making us sweat and bounce even more. The guitarist lead vocalist was the focus through much of the show and his voice held the songs together and felt very personal, like he was talking to you and a few friends, not to a few hundred sweaty fans bouncing around in the mosh pit.

The mosh pit was bigger than ever and fun, filled with smiling people bouncing around and surging off of each other. All the thrashing fans in the mosh pit showed an innate politeness and niceness, and those are not terms I usually use to describe a mosh pit. Seriously, it was the nicest, sweetest mosh pit I've ever been in. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't lame or low intensity at all, it was full of people flying around and surging forward and to the sides and sweating and thrashing, your typical intense mosh pit. Nobody was in studs and leather, no really big dudes who like bruising people, and none of those boneheads who like to cover their faces with a bandanna then do spin moves with feet flying, putting everyone nearby at risk. I was happy not to run into any of that, it made being in the mosh pit after more than 5 decades on this Earth much more manageable.

Dames also had the most elaborate set - they put up a vinyl goose. OK, not terribly elaborate, but probably the best I've seen since The Lonely H did the light sabre duel in the way back in the 2004 Sound Off - they came in second. Not only did Dames bring the crowd, they were great to mosh with and their joy in the performance was infectious and the night ended up being a sweaty dance party on top of a rocking show - and that's one of my favorite things to experience.

I'm amazed at the level of talent on display at the first weekend of the Sound Off contest, every band was great and did something completely different and unique. Laser Fox ended up winning, and they arguably put on the best show. Dames was the runner up so they have a shot to make it as the wild card band and for once the judge's selections seem pretty solid. In the past the judges always seemed to reward the weakest bands, so this was refreshing. I shouldn't be surprised, the judges included Hollis and Marco Collins and I respect them both for their musical taste - Collins helped form or should I say update my taste a few decades back when he was a DJ on a local Seattle radio station and Hollis performs and contributes to some of my favorite musical stuff at a ridiculously high level - you can't nail that many things that well without having exquisite musical taste and judgement. Definite hat tip and high fives all around to the judges for representing and choosing awesome dynamic performers to advance.

I've discovered that the mosh pit is a time travel device. When I get into the mosh pit, my age decreases by a decade or more: I'm much younger and more energetic, and it's a fun and occasionally joyous experience. Then I get out of the mosh pit and go into the cold outside air, and the missing decade comes back from his smoke break, and he's got another couple decades of his buddies he invited over, and I feel SO OLD. I shuffle back to the car lifting my sore feet with my sore legs, sweat evaporating and cooling me off rapidly.
While the end of the evening is a little painful, there's a tautology here that guarantees that it's always worth it. I was sore because I had been dancing and moshing, and that's a spiritual experience to me. At the best shows the music takes you out of yourself and engages you in every way. You move and respond to the music physically, just as you react and respond to it emotionally. You're sharing this experience in a fellowship with the rest of the crowd. Good lyrics engage your intellect too, and emotionally charged writing often fires off associations and memories.

It's a wonderful and intense experience, and I'm always happy to be introduced to more bands that are figuring out how to engage and move a crowd, how to create and present their art and entertain and thrill us. Here's to four new to me bands that are all worth keeping an eye out for and going out of your way to see. All of these bands know what they are doing and I look forward to watching them progress, and yes to, some day saying "I knew them when..."